Nicolas Cage recalls being cast on The Dating Game when he was 14, but his dad wouldn’t let him do it

Actor Nicolas Cage, known for playing unhinged characters that can range from timid or hilarious to "whoa-there-that’s-bananas" types of roles, recently revealed that his first audition was for game show The Dating Game when he was only 14 years old. Not only that—but he got the job! 

“The first audition I ever had was for The Dating Game,” he told the New Yorker in an interview for his new film Longlegs. “I got it, but my dad wouldn’t let me do it. I was too young. I was, like, 14. My audition tape is out there somewhere.”

Despite his dad (August Coppola, brother of director Francis Ford Coppola) shooting down the job, Cage thought he was pretty good (“I got the gig”) and “funny.” He further mused over how the show cast an actual serial killer, Rodney Alcala, noting that audiences are drawn to people who are appealing on the surface, but have a darkness to them. “That’s the human experience. We’re all weather vanes. I like complexity. I’m drawn to characters [...] that are complex, and that have multiple facets—you know, Blanche DuBois saying the human heart can’t be straight, or even in Moonstruck, the snowflake speech: 'We’re here to ruin ourselves.” I think that’s just truth. I mean, we do the best we can.'”

However, Cage says he really doesn’t like “to do” the serial killer type roles he portrays in Longlegs because he “doesn’t like violence.”

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“I know that the phone’s going to be ringing off the hook to play serial killers after Longlegs,” adding that “it’s not really what I like to do. I don’t like violence. I don’t want to play people who are hurting people.”

The character of Dan Ferdinand Cobble aka Longlegs, whom he told Entertainment Weekly was inspired by a key memory of his mother, is a Satan worshipper and doll maker who targets families with a 9-year-old daughter born on a specific day. He makes and delivers dolls to the families—which happen to be possessed by the devil—claiming the minds of the fathers, and inspiring them to murder their families and themselves. Eeek!

But Cobble is far from his most violent role. In the past, Cage has played numerous killer archetypes like Castor Troy in John Woo’s Face/Off, 2018’s indie darling Mandy, 2017’s Mom and Dad in which he plays a dad hunting his own children, and many many more. Maybe he should rethink playing serial killers — he’s just too good!